Eddie Gray

BEFORE Saturday’s game with Barnsley I never saw a goalless draw coming. I thought we would win the game comfortably and I was quite confident that we would win the game.

But to perfectly honest, for periods of the game, Barnsley were the better team.

They fully deserved the result.

I don’t know whether it was Danny Wilson coming back that inspired them because they are bottom of the table or whether it was just that Barnsley jinx.

But if you have a look at the game against Barnsley last year and if it wasn’t for the penalty kick that Luciano Becchio scored then that would have been a goalless draw.

We were pretty fortunate last year to beat them.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that Barnsley played the better football on Saturday.

We put a bit of pressure on them in the second half but it was huff and puff.

But in saying that when I was speaking to Brian McDermott after the game, Brian wasn’t too disappointed because he knows there is still work to be done at Elland Road.

And the thing about it is that if you look at the league we never won the game on Saturday but we moved up the league!

That’s why this is such a strange league and you wouldn’t have thought that if we drew with Barnsley who are bottom of the table at home that we would have moved up a place in the league. The league is so tight now.

You look at Leicester going to QPR and winning, so that closes it all up.

But definitely the form team in the league are Derby County as they are flying along just now.

But we are not far behind and there’s a lot of pluses.

Big Matt Smith should have scored on Saturday but I must say with the way the game was going he was our biggest threat.

He won a few headers and missed a couple of chances but he was still in and around the box which was good.

But I think a concern for everybody is that if you look at the games recently – the last two games that Ross McCormack has not scored was Saturday against Barnsley and the game at Blackburn. And from those two games we only took one point out of six.

That wasn’t Ross’ fault on Saturday, I just think that we never created enough on Saturday and Ross could not really get into the game.

But we are in a position now where we are half way through the season more or less coming up to the Christmas period and Brian has always said if we are in and around the top six around about period then we have a great chance.

He’s very astute is Brian.

He knows the game, he knows how the football club are going and I think we are in a good position now – I really do.

But I don’t think anybody will be happy with just finishing in the play-offs.

And you have got to aim for the top two and Leicester beating QPR just closes it all up again.